Tensile test method for 3-D fabrics / Rohaya Othman

3-dimensional (3-D) fabrics are woven using yarn in three mutually orthogonal directions to each other. These fabrics are used for composite and it is usually made from the high-performance fibres such as carbon and glass, which are very brittle. Determining tensile properties of brittle fabrics can be problematic because these fabrics will be crushed at the jaws of the test machine. Several Four-layer 3-D fabrics were chosen in the project: stitch satin (SS), 3-float angle interlock (3A), 3- float angle layer interlock (3AL) and 4-float layer-to-layer interlock (4L). The structures of the fabrics are angle interlock and stitched satin which are novel structures from an earlier research. To make these fabrics suitable for tensile testing, the tabbing area of the fabric should be treated with resin, this tabbing process was done using plastic mould. The fabrics were tested using Testometric Tensile Tester. It was found that an angle layer interlock structure 3AL has the highest strength and 3 A the lowest. The result of the tensile testing was compared with the. strength of the composite. It was found that there is no correlation between fabric and composite strength except 3AL.